A Narrative Study Of Chinese Civil Trial Discourse

Civil trial is a lawsuit process in which the civil cases are heard in courts according to the legal rules at a certain date when both parties and other participants in proceedings are present after the appellate court finishes the preparation work for the hearing. Civil trial is an important stage in the civil litigation actions.Based on the collection of 13 civil trials as data for analysis, the study examines the real language use in civil trials. We adopt the rhetoric narrative theory by James Phelan, the Principle of Goal Direction by Liao Meizhen and constructionism as holistic theoretical framework in this dissertation. We use the theories and methods of discourse analysis to describe the features and functions of narrative in civil trials as a typical institutional discourse qualitatively and also give necessary interpretations to the results of the description. By focusing on the static features of civil trial narrative, the dynamic features of transgression of civil trial narrative, the narrative function of legal fact construction and identity construction, the study reveals that the civil trial narrative, as a typical institutional narrative, is featured by rule-governed-ness, goal-directedness, competitiveness and constructiveness.The main contents of this dissertation briefly summarize as follows:Chapter One firstly makes an introduction to the reasons why the present study is conducted. Then it comes to make an overview of the dissertation:the research contents, the purposes, the data and the methods, the research significance as well as the whole organization of the dissertation.Chapter Two firstly reviews the literature on the studies of trial discourse at home and abroad, then reviews the literature on the studies of narrative in both the literature circle and the linguistic circle, lastly reviews the literature on the studies of trial narrative in both the linguistic circle and the legal circle at home and abroad. The study of trial narrative is an interdisciplinary research of law, linguistics and literature, which must take the advantage of both the research findings of narrative studies in literature and micro-discourse analysis methods on the basis of the real data collected in linguistics. The research perspective and scope of trial narrative is to be created and enlarged.Chapter Three adopts the rhetoric narrative theory by James Phelan, the Principle of Goal Direction by Liao Meizhen and constructionism as the three main theoretical resources, absorb and extend the useful parts to construct a holistic theoretical framework for the present study. The civil trial narrative is featured by rule-governed-ness, goal-directedness, competitiveness and constructiveness. Constructiveness is the basic feature of civil trial narrative, goal is the driving force for it, and as a face-to-face narrative in courts, it is governed by the legal rules. By competitiveness, it means that the parties are competing for their different interests and are also facing the pressure of making choices from within. These four features are closely connected and mutually based.Chapter Four examines the static features of narrative communication model, narrators, narrative point of view and narrative level in civil trial narrative by borrowing those concepts from the structural narrative studies. It is found that civil trial narrative is double-leveled. The outer level refers to the communication between the author of judge as the court Commander and the hearer of judge as the decision-maker. The inner level refers to the different kinds of face-to-fact communication, such as between the judge and the agents, between the judge and the parties, between the judge and the witnesses and so on. The institutionality of narrators means that their roles are fixed and they have clear institutional tasks. The narrative points of view are restricted by the narrators. And the variation of narrative points of view has two main pragmatic functions, one of which is the control of information and the other of which is the control of narrative effect.Chapter Five adopts the concept of transgression of rhetoric narrative theory to examine to the dynamic features of civil trial narrative. The civil trial narrative can be divided into four stages, namely, the opening address, the defence address, the evidence examination and arguments, which are connected but different from the procedures of civil trial. It is found that the transgression of these four stages is developed from the objective to the subjective, from the brief to the detailed, from the event to the story and from the fact to the rights and interests.Chapter Six examines one important function of civil trial narrative, namely, legal fact construction. The legal facts can be constructed by narrative at four levels, that is, the choice of events, the narration of events, the organization of events and the evaluation of events. By the choice of events, it firstly means that the competitive parties will choose those events which are favorable to them to narrate and ignore those unfavorable ones, then it means that the narrators will hypothesize some events and compare them to the supposedly true events to prove the factuality of the supposedly true ones. What's more, the choice of events are not always active, but some of them are passive since the parties are competing with each other and sometimes the judge will examine them to make clear the facts. By the narration of events, it means that the narrators can foreground the different elements of some events, weight the events differently and choose different ways to present them. The organization of different events is also a way of construction. Finally, the evaluation of events is needed to draw a conclusion so that a case fact can be turned into a legal fact. These four levels occur at the same time, but each has its own characteristics. Every act of narration is a combination of them.Chapter Seven examines another important function of civil trial narrative, namely, identity construction. The identities in civil trials can be categorized into three kinds. Firstly, the identities in the primary reality refer to discourse identities and institutional identities produced linguistically in the immediate context of courtroom in proceedings. Secondly, the identities in the secondary reality refer to identities in cases. Thirdly, the transportable identities refer to the existing identities before the case takes place which are comparatively fixed and can be carried to the primary reality and secondary reality. The discourse identities of judges consist of an institutional spokesman, a host of civil trial, a controller of emotion and an entity investigator. The discourse identities of parties consist of an information provider, an examiner of evidence and an expresser of emotion. The discourse identities of agents consist of a spokesman of parties and a law professional. The identities in cases are mainly constructed through the narration of actions, attitudes and interests. The construction strategies of transportable identities include the categorization of identities, the particularization of identities and differentiation of identities.Chapter Eight draws a conclusion. It also discusses the contributions to the current research, the limitations and suggestions of the study.This dissertation contributes to the field of study in many aspects, including:first, the civil trial discourse is studied from the narrative perspective; second, the rhetoric narrative theory, the Principle of Goal Direction and the constructivism are integrated as the holistic theoretical framework for narrative study of civil trial discourse; third, the narrative features and functions of civil trial discourse are examined at the micro-level with the combination of literature narratology and discourse analysis; last, the findings of the study bear implications on legal narratology, trial discourse study and civil trial practices.